If it wins, “AI Steve” will be represented in Parliament by businessman Steve Endacott. Endacott says he will be a mere conduit and that AI will make the political decisions.
As the United Kingdom approaches elections next month, the country is witnessing for the first time a new type of politician: an AI candidate. AI Steve, an avatar of businessman Steven Endacott from Brighton, is running for Parliament as an independent.
Voters will be able to vote for AI Steve; they will also have the chance to ask him about his political views or make him aware of their own problems. AI Steve will then incorporate the suggestions and requests into his platform. First it was newspapers, and now politicians.
A marketing move to reach a political position
Endacott will be the in-person representative who’ll attend meetings and parliamentary sessions on behalf of AI Steve. He says he sees AI Steve as a way to enable a more direct form of democracy. “In reality, I believe we are reinventing politics using AI as a technological foundation, as a co-pilot, not to replace politicians, but to truly connect them with their audience, with their constituents,” says Endacott.
AI Steve was designed by Neural Voice, an AI voice company. Endacott is president of the company. According to Jeremy Smith, co-founder of Neural Voice, AI Steve can handle up to 10,000 conversations at once. “A key element is to create its own database of information,” says Smith.
The idea for AI Steve arose from Endacott’s own frustration in trying to enter politics to advocate for issues that concerned him. “I am very concerned about the environment. We need a lot of changes in government to truly help control climate change,” he says.
“The only way to do it is to stop talking outside and get inside the store and actually start changing the policy,” he explains. When Endacott tried to run for election in previous years, he felt that everything revolved around party maneuvers and worrying about which seats or districts were ‘safe’, instead of responding to the needs of real people.
AI Steve, he claims, will be different. AI Steve will transcribe and analyze the conversations he has with voters and will pose policy questions to “validators,” or regular people who will be able to indicate if they’re concerned about a particular issue or if they want a certain policy enacted.
AI Steve has only been operational for one day, but Endacott and Smith claim that the main concerns expressed by the people who have contacted AI Steve are related to the conflict in Palestine and local issues such as garbage collection.
Although Endacott allows that his own political opinions or preferences may differ from those of AI Steve at some point, he says that he’s committed to voting according to the preferences of voters expressed through AI Steve.
